AfterDawn: News

Microsoft sues Motorola over Android phone patents

Microsoft has sued Motorola this week, alleging patent infringement on a number of Android devices.

The software giant says Motorola infringes on patents "that are essential to the smartphone user experience, including synchronizing email, calendars and contacts, scheduling meetings, and notifying applications of changes in signal strength and battery power."



Microsoft filed the suit with the U.S. District Court and the International Trade Commission (ITC).

There are nine patents in questions, all relating to Android smartphones.

The new case seems similar to the suit filed in March by Apple against HTC, a popular maker of Android phones. Apple claims Android violated iPhone patents.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 1 Oct 2010 22:37

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• 9 comments

• KillerBug

  You can't make anything without violating some patent these days...even the calender (the idea of a calender in general) is patented!

  1.10.2010 23:10 #1

• ps355528

  why don't we just sue everybody for everything.. then only the lawyers will be the only people left with any money and will have to sue themselves for all thinking of the idea at the same time..
  
  I'm getting sick and tired of these corporations taking the piss.. they ALL need smashing up and patents need to be either allocated PROPERLY or scrapped completely.. the US patent office is a bloody joke these days..
  

  
  
  irc://irc.villageirc.net/afterdawn

  2.10.2010 09:52 #2

• SomeBozo

  As a person that normally flips people manure all day like, i think i own the patent for that and all people posting will be sued for patent infringement.
  
  But seriously, can't agree more all the patents are running a muck it seems as everyone else has commented. Just make one person here think no longer to companies need to inovate or produce great products, just sue the competition to get the $$$ there poorly implemented products.
  
  Be funny if Motorola loses, and they purchase all the old available Kims for paying microsoft, while Motorola might get them near to nothing, they should say the retail price was... :)
  
  

  2.10.2010 11:45 #3

• bankai987

  wow... I should patent air so I could sue people for breathing. These patents are very vague and ridiculous. Patents deter innovation and should be abolished.

  2.10.2010 19:51 #4

• SomeBozo

  Originally posted by bankai987: wow... I should patent air so I could sue people for breathing. These patents are very vague and ridiculous. Patents deter innovation and should be abolished. I would disagree that patents stifle innovation, i would argue the contrary that patents encourage inovation and R & D by companies. Companies will only invest in new technology if they have some confidence there investment is protected and able to reclaim the cost through business. If they have no way to protect the investments made to develop something, they will not, nor should they take on such risk.
  
  I don't see a patents are necessarily a bad thing, but we all would agree a patent should be for something new and doesn't exist currently. An example I can think of, a company patented the concept of storing data organized and structured in tables in order to query, retrieval, and summarize the data contained within... Sounds just like a relational database, right? Edgar F. Codd, came up with with concept in the late 60's. However a company got the patent somewhere around 2000, and promptly went off to sue many of the companies offering database products, years after these companies had existing products.
  
  That is a prime example of the abuse with patents and where they have run wild to the state of lunacy...
  
  

  2.10.2010 20:11 #5

• ST2006

  Originally posted by SomeBozo: Originally posted by bankai987: wow... I should patent air so I could sue people for breathing. These patents are very vague and ridiculous. Patents deter innovation and should be abolished. I would disagree that patents stifle innovation, i would argue the contrary that patents encourage inovation and R & D by companies. Companies will only invest in new technology if they have some confidence there investment is protected and able to reclaim the cost through business. If they have no way to protect the investments made to develop something, they will not, nor should they take on such risk.
  
  I don't see a patents are necessarily a bad thing, but we all would agree a patent should be for something new and doesn't exist currently. An example I can think of, a company patented the concept of storing data organized and structured in tables in order to query, retrieval, and summarize the data contained within... Sounds just like a relational database, right? Edgar F. Codd, came up with with concept in the late 60's. However a company got the patent somewhere around 2000, and promptly went off to sue many of the companies offering database products, years after these companies had existing products.
  
  That is a prime example of the abuse with patents and where they have run wild to the state of lunacy...
  100% agree. If you think Patents are stupid, why don't you invent something only to have it stolen by a company who already works in that field, or a supermarket who'll develop their own brand.
  
  Patents are good, this is just them being abused. So something needs to happen in order to avoid system abuse...
  
  Edit: Responding to Greghig - everything carries its cost these days, including success :(
  
  vvvv
  

  SmokeThis2006

  3.10.2010 10:27 #6

• greghig

  Everybody who is successful is automatically bombarded by people with their hand out. this is just another example of greed. nothing more.

  3.10.2010 13:46 #7

• plazma247

  This is just an example of microsoft is to scared to go after google, and cant go after htc due to them making most of the windows 7 bones.
  
  So who do they sue, motorola, lol microsoft, considering its all because moto dropped wm as a platform and since their licencing ran out microsoft would use the opertunity to have a test case pop at droid.
  
  Now considering the microsoft are mostly talking about exchange sync abilities, which in functionality is the same as google sync but google uses far more modern protocols.
  
  As calendar syncing/contact/email has been a feature on smart phones way before wm6 and possibly 5 was born.
  
  Cant see microsoft winning this one, its just microsoft upset as all of a suddent their projected balence sheet which included moto giving them a wad for windows phone licences, fails to tally up with the real figures, i know some smart arse thinks we will just re-cover it in court.
  
  Well personally i would love to see this battle kept in the media with all droid partners rallying around moto to make sure ms doesnt stand a chance.
  
  Its like freking microsofts other claim against htc, sorry apples (since ms own the majority share maybe i was right the first time) and trying to sue htc when the decided they might not make the windows phone 7, strangle since then no more mention of the suing htc ive seen in the news... !
  
  Stangly again all the supposed infringements were down to feature of the android os and nothing to do with htcs hardware really.
  
  So the big flag is trying to poke at droid from any angle it can to get a test case through against a phone manufacture but really against droid, soon as it wins the test case it knock knock google.
  
  So lets see what happens, personally microsoft wp7 is probably their last ditch attempt to win back some smartphone market share, but with virtually every handset manufcature switching to droid for the lack of development cost or software licence i really cant see how they can hope to stand a chance.
  
  What happened in the server market, microsoft wanted ever more money for their server platforms and over 10 years linux took over running the marjority of the worlds internet and network infrastructure.
  
  Why because the licence model.
  
  Netbooks a new player have been mostly linux, due to the low cost nature of the device from the start.
  
  Smartphones next, more and more manufactures understood the benifits of using droid, there are more droid partners now that i think there were ever windows mobile partners and all the windows mobile partners now make droid phones...
  
  Desktops are on of the last bastials of microsoft power, but assuming the openoffice mess is sorted ive seen more and more desktops switching to linux of some flavour.
  
  Only thing thats not happened yet is for a main stream linux gaming platform.
  
  Just thinking off point, doesnt imap also offer syncing abilities of folders so technically if you manipulated the stored data into email form you could store contacts etc as well.
  
  So maybe microsoft should also sue the Mullets for the invention of imap which is just as capable of the same thing.
  
  Or maybe Google needs to stop waiting for microsoft to try an engineer a situation they can win some ground on and just "DONT BE EVIL" and put microsoft out of the missery now and pull out old betsy !!
  
  Whos better google suits or microsoft suits when it comes to legal, we all want to see ... !!!

  4.10.2010 12:30 #8

• grafikwolf (unverified)

  if Microsoft could actually make a mobile os that worked they could compete with android and iphone. Course if they spent less time suing and more time developing maybe even the mongoloids in their development department could come up with something that acutally worked so far the only thing microsoft still has going for it is they were the founders but now they are just dinosaurs that cant compete.

  26.10.2010 07:07 #9